Rough Living

Front matter

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Rough Living

Surviving violence & homelessness

Chapter 3: A Chain of Disadvantage Tracing Chained Disadvantage through Biography Surviving Homelessness and Violence: A Biographic Overview

In the beginning: childhood adversity

Early home leaving

Early school leaving

Failed early intervention

Family fragmentation and social isolation Addiction: drugs, alcohol and gambling Iterative homelessness, iterative violence Becoming a perpetrator

Returning to prison, returning to homelessness Few exits

The Closed Circuit of Victimisation and Homelessness

Conclusion

Listening

References iii

PREAMBLE

This research project emerged in response to the growing number of informal narratives of violent victimisation encountered by staff of Homeless Persons' Legal Service (HPLS) in their work with homeless clients and current and former homeless advocates in Sydney, New South Wales. Despite consistent reports of repeated experiences of violence occurring both before and whilst living homeless, it was observed that little current local documentation or wider policy acknowledgment of these exists. Disturbingly, reports about episodes of violence revealed that positive engagement with responding emergency and support services was rare and in many cases was never even sought, and that the opportunity for the follow-up of past traumatic events was even rarer. Most distressing, however, was the perception identified amongst victims that often brutal and repetitive victimisation was a ‘normal’ and accepted part of everyday life in the past and present, and an expected part of everyday life in the future.

As a researcher in the homelessness field with a particular interest in trauma, I was approached in 2008 to begin designing what would become a contract project for HPLS exploring homeless people's survival of violence. The project was shaped in response to

the key concern of HPLS staff that rich and insightful narratives about the experience and context of long-term violence remained unrecorded and yet represented powerful evidence for use in advocacy work, challenging both how homelessness is understood to eventuate and be prolonged and how it is responded to.

As such, this project has at its core a concern to listen to and learn from both homeless people's personal narratives of violence and their analyses of the social contexts in which these narratives emerge. My primary focus has been to facilitate the documentation and formalisation of data generated through interviews in order to provide a resource for

HPLS, and secondly, to offer my own analysis of how it is that homelessness and violence interweave. As a small-scale pilot project it aims to break the descriptive and conceptual ground at the nexus of violence and homelessness and to call for larger scale social research to further deepen and broaden the evidence-base and political valency of this issue.

Dr Catherine Robinson Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Technology, Sydney iii

Introduction

ROUGH LIVING

It is well known that the population of those currently experiencing homelessness in Australia has now reached over 100,000, with 27,000 estimated to be living in NSW, and 16,000 in the greater Sydney region (Chamberlain & MacKenzie 2009, p. 45). A current resurgence of policy interest in homelessness at both state and federal levels again offers opportunities to refocus on the issues central to perpetuating homelessness and on the alignment of these issues with current government and community responses. With the recent release of the Australian Government's new raft of social policies to address homelessness, outlined in The Road Home (Commonwealth of Australia 2008), and the recent development of the NSW Homelessness Action Plan (NSW Government 2009), it is now becoming clear that stemming the erosion of affordable housing and recognising the need for housing and support will characterise future strategies aiming to reduce and end homelessness. Better understanding of the important role of support stems from available evidence of the ‘high and complex needs’ of those who deal with homelessness in the context of mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction (see, for example, Bisset, Campbell & Goodall 1999; NSW Ombudsman 2004; Robinson 2003). For this group, some of whom endure repeated or iterative episodes of homelessness long term,

it is now widely understood that affordable housing alone is unlikely to be an adequate or lasting solution to homelessness.

Another issue key to the experience of homelessness, particularly iterative and complex homelessness, is violent victimisation. Problematically, however, violent victimisation still receives limited acknowledgment within policy development or academic research, despite the fact that existing studies, both in Australia and internationally, consistently document that people experiencing homelessness report a horrendous and disproportionate level

of victimisation, including repeated experiences of childhood abuse, domestic and family violence, rape, physical and sexual assault, and robbery (see, for example, Buhrich, Hodder & Teesson 2000; Jasinski et al. 2005; Kipke et al. 1997; Kushel et al. 2003; Larney et al. 2009; North, Smith & Spitznagel 1994; Taylor & Sharpe 2008). It is clear that repeated experiences of violent victimisation are more likely for those whose homelessness is both prolonged

and made complex by mental illness and substance abuse, and yet the wide-ranging and often enduring impacts of victimisation are rarely acknowledged and considered as part of "housing plus' (Morrison 2009, p. 1) responses to homelessness.

Given the small but nonetheless powerful body of available research evidence which concludes, ‘a history of violent victimisation is associated with the initiation and prolongation of homelessness' (Kushel et al. 2003, p. 2492), it is also deeply troubling that more commonly public policy and public opinion address homeless people as perpetrators of crime (Strategic Partners 1999, p. 37). This is disturbing in a context in which one Australian study concluded simply that 'a lifetime experience of trauma is common among homeless people' (Buhrich, Hodder & Teesson 2000, p. 966), with half of the female participants reporting rape and over half of male and female participants reporting physical assault (Buhrich, Hodder & Teesson 2000, p. 965). Half of the homeless respondents in a more recent Australian study indicated they had been violently victimised at least once in the past year (Larney et al. 2009, p. 348).

As Gaetz (2004, p. 447) concludes, however, 'the homeless in general are cast not as real or potential victims ... but rather, as criminal offenders' (see also Alder 1991, p. 3; Strategic Partners 1999, pp. 4-5) and as a result public policy falls short of fully confronting violent victimisation as a central theme in homelessness. As Morrison (2009, pp. 2-3) points out

in the Australian context, for example, it is a surprising oversight that neither homeless policy nor research yet adequately addresses sexual violence, which remains so pivotal

in the lives of many homeless women in particular. It has also been argued that crime prevention frameworks implicitly underpin the current policy and practice shift towards early intervention strategies aimed at homeless young people in particular (Strategic Partners 1999, p. 37). Here again, an explicit recognition of young homeless people's likely experience of violent victimisation remains missing.

The silencing of homeless people's experience of victimisation is ensured socially by beliefs that homeless people are somehow deserving of violence because of their risky lifestyles — most extremely demonstrated in the active perpetration of violent hate crimes against those homeless (NCH/NLCHP 2008; Wessler & Melnick 2005). It is also ensured institutionally

by the exclusion of homeless people from national crime surveys which inform crime prevention policy and through the evolution of service sectors without resources and time to offer more than superficial care to homeless people. Further, the entrenched under-reporting of victimisation by homeless people suspicious of law enforcement and emergency health agencies only serves to further cyclically perpetuate these silences. It is also tragically ironic that in the public domain homeless people are understood as a threat, despite the fact that, internationally and in Australia, homeless people strikingly report random members of the community (Alder 1991, p. 6; Ballintyne 1999, p. 15; Newburn & Rock 2005, p. 27) and indeed law enforcement officers (Alder 1991, p. 6; Zakrison, Hamel & Hwang 2004) as major perpetrators of violent crime against them.

In Australia, research on homelessness and violence is particularly limited with the first major study since Alder’s (1991) work on the violent victimisation of homeless youth only appearing recently (Larney et al. 2009). This quantitative study examines the violent victimisation of homeless adults in Sydney in the 12 months prior to participation in the research. The only other recent study to emerge in Australia (Murray 2009) qualitatively examines women’s experiences of violence during homelessness. Importantly, both studies confirm the findings of international research that violence is endemic to the experience

of homelessness, particularly long-term iterative homelessness, is linked to poor mental health and substance abuse, and has cumulative and lasting impacts on victims’ continuing vulnerability to poor physical and mental health, to housing instability and to further violent victimisation. These findings are deeply worrying in the context in which it has been estimated that, at any one time, at least a quarter of homeless populations in countries such as Australia may be experiencing long-term iterative homelessness with associated high and complex needs (Reynolds 2007, pp. 4-5).

The present study seeks to complement this recent research in its different interest in the ways in which both violence and homelessness may be intimately intertwined right across the full life course, rather than in a specific time period or only during periods of time spent homeless. As Wenzel, Leake & Gelberg (2001, p. 749) argue, 'qualitative research is also needed to more thoroughly understand the course and context of violence' for those homeless. In recognition of the enduring impacts of trauma often resulting from violent victimisation and its repetition, this project examines long-term trajectories of violence to which episodes of homelessness may be connected in both immediate and delayed ways. Given that experiences of violence may be interspersed throughout periods of both stable housing

and homelessness, this is to ask both about how survivors of violence are vulnerable to homelessness and about how survivors of homelessness are vulnerable to violence.

This study uniquely uses the social research methodology of biography to build up an intimate understanding of how repeated violence is experienced, managed and survived across the life path. In its close focus on individual life pathways, the study explores observations that early victimisation frames later vulnerability to both repeated victimisation and homelessness and that, in turn, the wider socio-spatial exclusion and marginalisation associated with homelessness specifically prolongs and entrenches vulnerability to violence (see also, Kushel et al. 2003; Lee & Schreck 2005).

The project was framed by the following research questions:

1. What experiences of violence have homeless people had and how have they managed these?

2. What factors shape homeless people's vulnerability to violence?

3. Which services best respond to requests for assistance in dealing with violent victimisation and what are the gaps in available assistance?

4. What do reflections on victimisation reveal about the relationship between homelessness and violence?

Addressing some of the silences within social research and social policy, these questions reflect an initial attempt to frame the collection of qualitative data about experiences of violence and how these are managed, and to characterise the landscapes of violence that many who experience homelessness move through. Further, in taking up violent victimisation as one key ‘lens’ through which to understand homelessness, a new light is shed on both the gaps and possibilities in appropriate service, policy and community responses (see Morrison 2009, p. 1). As will be discussed in Chapter 4, however, the intention of the report to explore the service use of participants revealed instead the marginal and at times negative place of services in participants’ lives. Whilst limiting the report’s account of service use, this absence tellingly revealed what might be the very specific outcome of long-term and persistent experiences of violence and homelessness - isolation, including disconnection from the helping professions themselves.

Chapter One BIOGRAPHIES OF VIOLENCE

Research on homelessness and violent victimisation has usually been undertaken via large, descriptive, cross-sectional statistical studies predominantly generated within the disciplinary areas of public health, community medicine and psychiatry. A concern for most researchers has been to generate nationally comparative rates of victimisation for those homeless in order to evidence and highlight their alarmingly disproportionate experience of violence. Studies are commonly split in their concentration on either homeless people's experiences of childhood victimisation within family homes (Janus et al. 1995; Thrane et al. 2006) or their experiences of victimisation within recent periods of homelessness (Alder 1991; Ballintyne 1999; Gaetz 2004; Kipke et al. 1997; Larney et al. 2009; Newburn & Rock 2005), though a few offer epidemiologic overviews of lifetime experiences of trauma and violence (Buhrich, Hodder & Teesson 2000; North, Smith & Spitznagel 1994; Taylor & Sharpe 2008). Further, many researchers focus on the experience of a particular form of violent victimisation and its relationship to homelessness, for example, domestic and family violence (Browne 1993; Tually et al. 2008), childhood sexual and physical abuse (Tyler et al. 2001; Wenzel, Koegel & Gelberg 2000), and rape and sexual assault (Goodman, Fels & Glenn 2006; Morrison 2009; Wenzel, Leake & Gelberg 2001.

In contrast, this project aimed to develop a qualitative overview of the cyclical and enmeshed relationship of violence and homelessness and to examine the context and impact of violence throughout the life paths of those who become homeless. As a biographic study

the project was extremely small scale, involving only 12 participants in life story interviews. The researcher can find no similar published research undertaken either in Australia or internationally and as such the project is unique in its methodological design. Further, this approach may also be understood as an alternative, or useful precursor, to longitudinal research which is seen by many as the needed and ideal form of research in this area (Borris et al. 2002, p. 362; Larney et al. 2009, p. 350; Wenzel, Leake & Gelberg 2001, p. 749).

Biography has developed within the social sciences as a research methodology specifically sensitive to the connections between individual experience and social and historical context (Denzin 1989, p. 9; Plummer 2001, p. 39) and to the exploration of marginal life histories (Liamputtong 2007, p. 113). Ihe aim of biography as a social research methodology is to develop an analytical, rather than descriptive, account of an individual's life. Researchers employ biography to explore key social forces and events which shape the course of individual life paths. In this project, face-to-face life story interviews were used to engage participants in developing a verbal account of their own biography in collaboration with the researcher. Interviews usually began with the initial prompt ‘Do you want to start by telling me a little bit about your earliest childhood memories, about where you grew up ...' but did not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion or, in many cases, with much further direct questioning from the researcher.

Life story interviewing ideally offers participants the opportunity to control the narration of their own lives and so is understood as an empowering research method appropriate for vulnerable people and for research topics which are emotionally difficult (Liamputtong

2007, p. 113). The use of life story interviews in this project enabled participants to select the information they were willing to share about their lives and to decide how detailed this information would be. This control became crucial for some when discussing subjects and events which they found distressing or which they wished to keep private. Importantly, the method allowed participants to talk widely about their life experiences, rather than focus only on events of victimisation.

Because of the extremely sensitive nature of the project's focus on violence, particular care was taken to consider the practical implementation of an ethical research design and formal ethics approval was granted by the UIS Human Research Ethics Committee. Professional supervision was provided for the researcher through the UTS counselling service. Weekly debriefing sessions during the fieldwork period provided an invaluable source of support and guidance in coping with the often extreme interview content and in appropriately managing the relational context of research interviews. The fieldwork was hosted by HopeStreet, a community welfare service supporting housed and homeless residents of Woolloomoolloo in inner-city Sydney. Sage Saegenschnitter, a community worker at HopeStreet specialising in outreach work with people experiencing homelessness, was employed as a research assistant on the project.

With the approval of HopeStreet, Sage was able to use her dual role as community worker and research assistant to recruit and practically and emotionally support participants through their involvement in the project. This included contacting potential participants, talking them through project information provided by the researcher, introducing them to the researcher, arranging appropriate times for interviews, and providing post-interview follow-up and support where required. It was Sage's particular concern to very clearly explain the project's focus and ensure participants were as comfortable as possible with the idea

of revisiting and documenting often extremely traumatic periods in their lives. Sage also arranged, where possible, the return of interview transcripts to participants, and passed

on any feedback or requests for further interviews. Because of Sage's position at HopeStreet, participants knew they had ongoing access to her support after the completion of fieldwork. In the context of the often unexpected effects of recalling traumatic memories, this ongoing availability of professional support for participants was a key dimension of the ethical design of the project.

The researcher was introduced initially to most participants by Sage in a drop-in café run

by HopeStreet and then interviews took place in a safe and private room in a secure area

of the building. Three participants were interviewed through another inner-city service, Women's and Girls' Emergency Centre, where a similar recruitment and interviewing process took place. As part of the information and consent process which preceded each interview, permission was obtained to digitally record the interviews, from which full de-identified transcripts were produced for return to participants for their feedback and for use in the process of thematic analysis. Participants were comfortable with an analysis strategy which would thematically draw out commonalities and differences across the body of data rather than one which might involve the detailed reporting and analysis of whole individual biographies (for example, narrative analysis). Whilst thematic analysis has the effect of fragmenting discussion of the life stories collected, it was an important point of reassurance for participants in the process of negotiating consent for the anonymous public dissemination of interview material.

Participants were paid $50 for their involvement in the life story interview which took anywhere between forty-five minutes and two and half hours. One interview was conducted in two separate instalments on different days partly because of time restrictions but also because the participant felt it would be extremely intense to try and work through his whole life history in one sitting. Participants were also to be paid $30 for optional follow-

up interviews to discuss the initial interview transcripts. Io the best knowledge of the staff supporting the project, all participants received a copy of their de-identified interview transcripts; however, no one requested further contact following receipt of these. It is possible participants were simply happy with what had been recorded, but also the emotional and practical effort of reconnecting with the researcher for further discussion may have been prohibitive. It is also possible that participants were empowered by the process of simply being listened to, knowing that they did not have to maintain ongoing contact. One participant was concerned that his transcript had been de-identified and requested a copy, which was provided, using original names and addresses and so on, for his own personal use. Best attempts will be made to ensure that all participants receive a copy of this final report.

Six men and six women aged between 31 and 62 years took part in the interviews which took place over a three-month period from September to November in 2009. With permission, pseudonyms were assigned to the participants by the researcher to protect their anonymity. Carrie (female, 48 years), Jim (male, 40? years), Dee (female, 47 years), Marty (female,

50? years), Jamie (male, 45 years), Alex (female, 49 years), Martin (male, 60 years), Mary (female, 40? years), Paul (male, 35 years), Peter (male, 48 years), Ben (male, 45 years) and Annika (female, 31 years) had all lived homeless for at least one year. Most had experienced homelessness off and on over their life course, including extensive periods of rough sleeping for up to 10 years, with periods of homelessness, including rough sleeping, beginning as early as age seven. Seven participants were currently homeless, either sleeping rough or staying in temporary accommodation, and five were recently accommodated in boarding houses and public or community housing. As noted above, all participants were identified and personally invited to take part in the research either by Sage or staff at the Women's and Girls’ Emergency Centre, and as such the report reflects consideration of data from a convenience sample rather than a representative one. During the process of recruitment, at least six potential participants declined involvement in the project when approached, making it clear they did not feel at the right point in their lives to discuss their life story in the context offered by the project.

Every interview involved the graphic and distressing discussion of often multiple accounts of violent victimisation including physical and sexual assault, torture, rape, and childhood sexual and physical abuse. All participants were currently safe and in touch with support services, with the researcher making only one specific referral to Sage, with the participant's permission, to ensure specific follow-up was provided. While nearly every participant became obviously distressed at various points over the course of their interviews, interestingly, it became clear that many had chosen to become involved in the project because of their desire to talk through their experiences of violence. For some, the interview coincided with other periods of private reflection (particularly for those who were currently housed) or therapeutic work (such as with a case worker, psychologist or psychiatrist) and presented another apparently safe space in which to give voice to often otherwise ‘unspeakable’ trauma. At

the conclusion of the interviews, many participants, despite initial nerves or reservations, expressed the positive emotional release telling their life story had brought them (see also, Robinson 2004, 2008). Some acknowledged that they had shared information in the interview that they had not been able to bring up with their friends, caseworkers or psychologists. Some even surprised themselves by revisiting experiences they had never previously discussed with anyone, and for some, such as Alex, the interviews were a chance 'to give something back, a little bit of life experience’.

Overall, the practical design of the fieldwork worked well, with support at hand on the

one occasion it was immediately required. Despite the grief that involvement in the project triggered, the fieldwork nonetheless delivered small immediate benefits for both participants and HopeStreet. The fieldwork brought at least one participant into contact with Sage and HopeStreet for the first time, and as it happened this was the participant who was in need of immediate support. Her relationship with the service has to date been ongoing. Most significantly, as noted above, the interviews presented what seemed to be a very important opportunity for many participants to work through, and even clarify, their traumatic experiences for themselves with ‘no strings attached’. With its focus on the telling and crafting of the story itself, the research interview clearly offered participants a unique venue in which to simply be heard, rather than to be ‘fixed’. Participants could also listen to themselves, to how their own life experiences sounded aloud; in other words, to experience some sense-making separation from their own pasts. They also experienced a ‘live’ response to their story, as one participant emphasised - the response of an embodied, focused listener.

As will be discussed in the following chapters, these observations of the need for a space in which extraordinary experiences could be voiced and confirmed are powerfully suggestive of the intense isolation which accompanies victimisation and of the inability of current services to intervene in this. Whilst such findings have immediate relevance in the arena of service provision, it is also useful to question what role and responsibilities research has in providing needed ‘listening spaces’ in which participants feel valued. Where possible, researchers should be encouraged to develop methods of research that in themselves have identified benefits for studied communities, rather than to justify their interventions on the basis of very delayed research impact. In the context of research on homelessness, such methods may imply extra costs and extended timeframes but may be crucial in ensuring participants do not, once again, experience the sharing of often excruciatingly painful lives as brief and mundane.

Chapter Two VIOLENI ECOLOGIES

Like I said, I've been bashed from pillar to post most of me life. Mary

This chapter examines the key contexts - home, homelessness and institutional care - in which violent victimisation played out for participants and also describes the kinds of victimisation that most commonly took place in each setting. Though the catalogue of victimisation presented here makes for grim reading, it is important to clarify the wide yet common range of experiences of violence participants reported, and to characterise the landscapes of violence that participants found themselves moving through at key points across their life course. This descriptive chapter precedes discussion in Chapter 3 about

the ramifications of victimisation and about the ways in which different geographies of violence overlap and link and become interwoven with the experience and perpetuation of homelessness.

Violence at Home

Whilst home for many is a site of care, safety and nurturing, for many who become homeless, home is the first site in which violent sexual and physical victimisation occurs and often remains a conflicted and dangerous place throughout the life course (see also Iomas & Dittmar 1995). Specifically, for those who become homeless, home is too often a key site

of childhood physical and sexual abuse and of domestic and family violence. All but one participant in this study experienced either childhood sexual or physical abuse, or both, and also witnessed or were direct victims of domestic and family violence. One male was also a perpetrator of family violence in the context of his own survival of chronic child abuse.

Despite the significant difficulties faced in accurately capturing data (resulting in under-reporting), research has clearly documented the extremely high rates of childhood sexual and physical abuse (understood here as the assault, rape or molestation of those aged under 18) experienced by those who become homeless. In combination with lack of care in the home, childhood physical and sexual abuse has been established as a powerful predictor of adult homelessness (Herman et al. 1997). Familial physical and sexual abuse have been widely reported in Australian and international literature as a central and even repeated experience for young homeless people in particular (see, for example, Downing-Orr 1996; Hatty, Davis & Burke 1996, p. 50; Janus et al. 1995; Rew, Taylor-Seehafer & Fitzgerald 2001). Studies have revealed that over 70 per cent of young homeless women and 30 per cent of young homeless men can be expected to be survivors of sexual abuse and that over 70 per cent of young homeless men and 30 per cent of young homeless women can be expected to be survivors of physical abuse (Thrane et al. 2006; Whitbeck, Hoyt & Bao 2000).

Likewise, research evidence suggests that domestic violence (understood here as violence occurring between intimate adult partners) and family violence (understood here as violence occurring between a range of intimate and extended family members) are common in

the lives of those who also experience homelessness. In particular, domestic violence and family violence have been shown to be overwhelmingly central to women's trajectories into homelessness (Tually et al. 2008, p. 13). As will be discussed, however, for the women participants in this study domestic violence was as likely to occur in the context of, rather than as a precursor to, homelessness. Witnessing domestic violence during childhood in their family homes, however, was a common precursor to homelessness for most participants.

In general, violence at home most often occurred in the context of discordant family relationships and poverty. Eight participants described childhoods marked by their parents' relationship breakdowns and separation, addiction and mental illness, housing instability, and inability and unwillingness to care for their children. Seven participants reported witnessing their parents' domestic violence and five were also exposed to the physical

and sexual abuse of their siblings. Further, 11 participants reported childhood sexual and physical abuse perpetrated mostly by parents and step-parents but also by siblings. Ihis included sexual abuse, physical torture, physical violence with weapons, physical bashings by punching, slapping and kicking, and neglect. Sexual and physical abuse was accompanied by emotional abuse which usually revolved around participants being told they were useless or unwanted, being threatened with further harm, including murder, and receiving punishment if they questioned the abuse or revealed the abuse outside the family. Several discussed the constant and intense anxiety associated with home life, which for some had not waned 40 and more years later.

The common context of childhood family discordance and violence was well illustrated by Alex. Alex described her brutal father and her awareness of her mother's experience of domestic violence as well as of her father's multiple addictions:

Alex: I was born in Melbourne. I'm one of eight children. I don't have a lot

of memory of my early childhood. I remember that my father was a really violent, aggressive mongrel of a man and I grew up with violence. I grew

up with him, and his alcoholism and his addiction to drugs, and he was an addict and alcoholic and he used to beat us and my mother and that's what

I grew up with basically. I left home at a really early age as a result of his beatings and seeing him the way he was, doing what he was doing. I couldn't take it, and I was usually on the end of his fist anyway so I left.

Jamie described the violence he experienced at the hands of his alcoholic stepfather and siblings and his awareness of the domestic violence experienced by his stepmother. At the time of his interview, Jamie was trying to establish his relationship with his parents and siblings with the assistance of a Child Abuse Assessment Team, which included investigating his belief that he may have been abducted as an infant from the Royal Hobart Hospital. Jamie revealed a particularly horrendous childhood marked by torture and imprisonment: